2006 - Wildcat Moon (23 page)

I was in s’house reading when he came in. I jumped to see him with the gun because Uncle has banned us from ever touching them.

Then he began to taunt me. He called my mama the most awful of names. He said she was a trollop and a whore and that my papa was forced to marry her. He is a liar. He said that everyone knew that I was a bastard.

He said the word over and over, spitting it into my face. He said that I should never be allowed to inherit Killivray because I was a bloody filthy Eyetie.

He pushed me down onto the sofa and pointed the gun into my face.

I have never been so terrified. He has eyes that are quite mad and he almost froths at the mouth like a rabid dog. I managed to get up and tried to get past him.

I truly feared for my life. He would not let me past and I had to wrestle with him. The gun went off and a bullet went straight through the roof.

There was the most awful scene. Uncle swearing and Aunt crying and begging him to calif or the police. Chas screeching that I had tried to kill him. On God’s life I never did. I couldn’t even speak up I was so shaken. Then cook came and Bo.

Later the key to the gun cabinet was found hidden in my trunk and I swear on Mama’s grave I do not know how it got there. I know now how much he truly hates me and I am fearful for my very life.

August 18
th

Uncle did not call for the police because of the shame it would bring on the family. I wish that he had and that they believed me—maybe they would lock Chas up. Uncle beat me so badly. I have weals on my back and legs and could barely stand. G brought me some ointment and cook sneaked up some soup and cheese but I cannot eat a thing. I am going to see Beaky F to ask for his help. I cannot endure it here a moment longer.

Benj has already gone away so I won’t be able to say goodbye to my best friend in all the world. I shall write to him as soon as I get back to Italy. I shall miss G and Bo and I am sad that I will not be able to visit my faithful Pipi’s grave but one day I will come back with Papa and throw Chas and his frightful family out of this house. I will take care of G and Bo because they have been so good to me.

Soon I will leave here and I swear that they will not stop me. Bo came in to say goodnight. I am sure that he knows what I am planning.

Archie put the diary down and walked over to the window. He looked across at the distant chimneys of Killivray House and imagined Thomas inside there afraid and still sore from his beating. He imagined how frightened he must have been when he was planning to run away. Archie wouldn’t even know how to start out on a journey to Italy.

If he had managed to run away then things might have turned out differently. He might have come back and chucked Charles and his horrible family out of Killivray. He would have looked after Bo and G and let Mr Fanthorpe stay in Nanskelly. And the world would have been a different place.

He felt as if he would burst with anger on Thomas’behalf. Charles Greswode was a monster, a spoiled, lying, pig of a boy. It wasn’t fair. Life wasn’t fair, though, was it? Just like Benjamin used to say and he was right.

He looked across at Hogwash House and imagined a young Benjamin coming back from the visit to his folks and finding out that his best friend was gone, not run away but dead.

Why hadn’t Thomas just run off to Italy? Why did he go out to Nanskelly? And then in the boat out past Skilly Point? If he hadn’t then surely he would have lived?

There were only a few pages of the diary left to read now and he sat down near the window devouring the last words that Thomas Greswode had ever written before he was lost to the sea.

August 19
th

I have packed a few of my most precious things in my little suitcase and hidden it in the Boathouse. Tomorrow I am going to Nanskelly. I know Beaky F will help me if he can. Benj has said I can use his boat while he is away. Maybe I will row much further round the coast. If I can only get to a station and then on a train to London I can get to France and can somehow make my way down to Italy. It will take an age but I have no choice. I will not stay here in this house. I have some money saved and I will get to Italy however hard it is. I desperately want to take Bo and G into my confidence but if they were caught helping me Uncle would go berserk and throw them out. It will break my heart not to say goodbye to them but it must be so.

Soon, soon, I shall be in my beloved Italy and away from here. I shall see my dear papa and tell him all that has happened. I am very tired and afraid but I shall be as brave as I can be.

Archie stayed at the window for a long time pondering over what he had read. Then he closed the diary sadly and put it back in its hiding place at the back of the cupboard.

In the Boathouse Gwennie wound up the gramophone and poured a drop of whisky into an old enamel mug.

She raised the mug and downed it in one go and then poured herself another.

She sat by the window and watched the darkness creep in off the sea, the shadows gradually eating up Skilly Beach. A thin crescent of a frail new moon was rising in the dark sky.

She’d known ever since the Wildcat Moon that things would start happening in the Skallies. And she’d been right too. And if she’d learned anything from the past she knew that the changes weren’t over yet.

Another Greswode was buried in Rhoskilly graveyard. God forgive her but she wasn’t sorry about that one little bit His father had been a pig of a man and he’d only allowed her to live in the Boathouse because he was afraid that she knew too much…

She’d barely spoken to Jonathan Greswode but she knew from the look of him that he was a bully and worse. There was something about him that made her flesh creep, something about him not right at all. He was a chip off the old block, a nasty bastard.

She’d only seen the governess a few times. She’d watched her once, from the cover of the woods, walking with the child in the snow and another time hurrying in through the bottom gate.

She had to hand it to her, she was a clever bugger. There’d been something furtive and watchful about her. Oh, yes, Clementine Fernaud was a mystery of a woman all right. There’d be no bringing a wily minx like her to justice, that was for sure.

By God she’d been surprised at all that had gone on in the past weeks. Folks weren’t what you thought they were at all…

She poured herself more whisky and laughed quietly to herself as the night darkened and the stars pricked the sky one by one.

She looked across at the wobbly chapel and shivered. She hadn’t been inside there for years. Not since…

Maybe, just maybe she should go back in there one more time and face up to the horrors of the past.

One Saturday afternoon Archie walked out to Nanskelly in the hope of seeing William Dally again.

It was good to be alone on the cliff path and away from the Skallies. The breeze was fresh and out at sea the waves were topped with white flecks. Seagulls screamed in the wake of an incoming fishing boat and in the distance a steamer ploughed doggedly out towards the curve of the horizon.

Archie climbed the stile and gazed across at Nanskelly School. The windows were open wide and the sound of a piano reached his ears and the tinkling of cutlery from the kitchen.

Archie breathed in the smell of cooking. Suet pudding and beef with thick gravy. Sticky treacle tart and custard without skin.

His mouth watered and his belly rumbled like a sink emptying.

Inside the school someone began to sing…

“Early one mor-or-ning just as the sun was ri-i-sing, I heard a maiden si-ing in the va-a-lley below. Oh, never lea-ave me, oh don’t decei-eive me. How-ow could you lea-ea-eave a por-or maiden so…”

The voice was young, high and pure with a tremble running through it the way the names of places ran through sticks of pink seaside rock.

It brought tears to his eyes and made his backbone weak with longing.

He found William Dally outside the potting shed.

“Well, I’ll be buggered. I’d given up hope of seeing you again,” he said looking up from his weeding.

“I’ve had the chickenpox,” Archie said.

“Poor old you. Fancy a cup of tea?”

“Please,” Archie replied.

“Come on in the shed and plonk yourself down on that box and I’ll fix us a brew.”

Archie sat down and looked around the potting shed. It was full of dusty flower pots of all shapes and sizes, shovels and forks, twine and old potato sacks. It smelled good in there, earthy, peaty and musty.

He’d have liked to work in a place like Nanskelly and have his very own private potting shed like William Dally.

“Had a right old time over there of late, haven’t you, what with all the goings-on up at Killivray House?”

“I missed most of it. I was in bed pickled with spots.”

“A queer old business altogether that was. Strange how that governess woman upped and murdered the master. Mind you, knowing the Greswodes, it probably weren’t all her fault.”

“But she murdered him! And she was a thief! It said so in the papers. And she stole Romilly Greswode!” Archie said with feeling.

“Appen she did but I don’t think she’d have reason to harm the child, do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Youll probably find shell leave the child somewhere safe once she’s got far enough away.”

“But where? And what if it’s so far away Romilly can’t find her way back to Killivray?”

“She’s got a tongue in her head. Shell have to ask. Look, I know it ain’t right, the Lord only knows that, but you shouldn’t be worrying your head about all this, son.”

“But she was my friend.”

William Dally looked up with interest. “Who was?”

“Romilly Greswode.”

“First I heard she had any friends. It was all the talk she was kept in the house like an exotic plant.”

“She was but I met her a couple of times, kind of by accident.”

“Oh, right.”

“She stole the car from here, didn’t she, that governess?”

William Dally looked thoughtful, “She did, right enough.”

“Did the police come here asking questions?”

“They did indeed. Quite a stir there was, the girls getting all overexcited and acting proper daft.”

“What did the police say?”

“Just wanted to know where the car was when it was stolen and how she got hold of the keys.”

“And how did she?” Archie asked.

“Well, Miss Fanthorpe’s usually most careful with her keys but she’d left them in the car that night. Mind you, like I said to the police, she does get very forgetful some days. Last week she went into assembly wearing odd shoes! One red one and one blue one.”

Archie giggled, and then looked up with a start to see a woman standing in the doorway.

Archie stood up quickly.

William Dally blushed deeply. “Morning, Miss Fanthorpe,” William muttered.

“Pray stay seated, young man, I only want a word with William,” she said to Archie.

“Let me introduce you to Master Archie Grimble.”

Miss Fanthorpe’s eyes lit up and she held out her hand.

Archie shook it shyly.

“How pleased I am to meet you. I know a little about you already.”

“Do you?” Archie said with surprise.

“A mutual, er, friend of ours told me all about you.”

Archie didn’t know what mutual meant so he stayed silent.

“Mr Benjamin Tregantle!” Miss Fanthorpe said with a twinkle in her eye.

Archie smiled back at her; it was a long time since he’d heard Benjamin’s name spoken out loud.

“I knew Benjamin real well,” he said.

“You must miss him dreadfully, I know I do.”

Archie looked down at his feet; he could feel the tears rising.

“It’s good to talk of the dead, however painful. It brings them to life, you see, means that they’re not forgotten.”

“I s’pose,” Archie replied with a sniff.

“When you two have had a good old yarn, could you bring in some potatoes, William? Oh, and I’ve another letter for you to post. Bring Archie inside at the same time—cook’s made some apple muffins and I’d like to get better acquainted with him. I’ve heard such good things about you, Archie.”

Archie felt the blood run to his face. There wasn’t much good for anyone to hear about him.

Miss Fanthorpe left them alone, walking briskly across the lawns and into the school.

“She likes you, I can tell,” William Dally said. “Here get that tea down your neck, douse the fire in your face, you’re red as a bloody beetroot.”

“Did you know Benjamin Tregantle well?”

“In some ways I did and in others I didn’t,” William Dally said.

“That’s a funny answer.”

“He were a complicated character. Larger than life at times. Quiet at other times. He were twice the man, mind, of a lot of his contemporaries.”

Archie nodded. “What was he like when he was a little boy?”

“He were quite shy as a boy, thoughtful like. Fancy all his travelling made him come out of himself.”

“Did he play cricket?” Archie asked.

“No. He were sickly when he were a child. Bad chest. He used to love the game, though, never missed a match if he could help it.”

Archie couldn’t imagine Benjamin ever being sickly or quiet He’d always looked so healthy.

“He were great friends with young Thomas Greswode we was talking about the other day.”

Archie’s ears pricked up. “I didn’t know that,” he lied.

“Like Siamese twins they were, joined at the shoulder.”

“He must have been really sad when Thomas died.”

“Terrible cut up he was. Made himself quite ill over it at the time. He got over it in the end, though.”

Archie fell silent. It still made him feel funny thinking of Benjamin and Thomas being friends. Benjamin had never mentioned Thomas Greswode to him but perhaps it had still made him sad even after such a long time. Then he remembered that folk in the Skallies used to say that Benjamin would cross the road to avoid Old Mr Greswode.

“He didn’t get on with Charles Greswode, Thomas’ cousin, did he?”

“No. I fancy he didn’t.”

“Why was that?”

“I s’pose he blamed the Greswodes for the loss of his friend and of course there was trouble at Thomas’funeral”